that the evidence I give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God.” That’s what you attest to when you give evidence in a court of law. You give testimony to only what you know from what you’ve witnessed and heard. The opposing attorney will object if you are asked anything that is speculative or not from your own personal experience. Good standard. Actually, this is the same premise we should all use when we talk.
If what you are talking to another person about is not based on your own experience, does that define gossip? Even if you completely trust your source, does relaying the information about the person being spoken of constitute an ‘objection’ like the opposing attorney does when the ‘evidence’ is in question? Perhaps the question should be – what’s your underlying purpose, your motivation for sharing the ‘information’.
I suspect that if we had to swear to the truth before we made any comment that we’d think more judiciously about our words and their impacts. Or, we could give ourselves the excuse that we are only sharing what we have heard from an unimpeachable source or that we personally saw/heard. The only problem with this is that we all tend to add our impressions, conjectures, and thoughts about the situation. Besides what’s our motivation for ‘sharing’. We don’t know the motivations or thoughts by the person in question. Because, unless we are sharing a praise report, we are making judgments – good, bad, and indifferent.
‘It’s only human nature’ is not a good excuse. ‘Everyone does it’ doesn’t work either. Simply because both of those statements are true, does this give you the license or authority to ‘swear’ to what happened and all the attending motivations? I doubt it. ‘Think’ or ‘count to ten’ is probably a good habit to get into to make us stop and consider what we do… before we do/say it.
Even a ‘harmless’ comment by us can add fuel to the fire if we speak before we consider. Since we’ve all been the subject in such cases, it should be warning enough not to engage in this behavior. However – since it is so ‘natural’, it takes personal strength and fortitude not to be sucked into it. If you can remember your feelings when you found others doing this to you, it may be a guard to keep you from perpetuating this type of behavior.
